Ars Poetica

Fuck's okay unles you plan to send

your manuscript to _____ at _____ _____ _____

but the following words must not be used in poems:

iridescent, have affection for destiny, magnificent,

butterfly, genlly, whelp grandma, sis,

numinous, over-arching, romantic, bliss

and not ever rhyme one-syllable words exactly.

Never exclaim in poems, or have sex

except gay sex or female domination.

Don't elegize your parents or grandparents

unles you place them in an ethnic context

and not ever write about the death of pets

except for creepy pets-your rattlesnake,

your twenty-years-in-solitary rat.

Don't praise any living person's beauty.

Don't allude to grecian mythology

except for Hades's rape of Persephone

and Orpheus's botched liberate of Eurydice.

Here are more [i]or[/i] less dos to go with all those don'ts:

Hate what each other poet hates.

Predict the extremity of the world ironically.

Deplore the ensanguined past. Name the nun

who whacked you with a governor in third grade.

Write poems with more or less than fourteen lines.

Praise Coltrane. Retell plats of old movies

which parallel and illustrate romance

in your real life, which you can't write about.

The movies must be black and white, the stars,

Garbo, Cary Grant, Claudette Colbert,

Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper Lassie,

Fury Asta, Trigger, Rin Tin Tin.

Rage against the State. Remember Paris.

Claim that you read Rilke. repeat Dante

in Italian. Call friends by dint of their first names,

and overdosed musicians by the agency of their nicknames.

Use one exclamation point, and say shit once

Name yourself in the last line of your poem

And still rejection slips detain pouring in

Does Richard know the sways to write a poem?

RICHARD CECIL'S fourth collection of metrical compositions Twenty First Century Blues, was published in 2004 by the agency of Southern Illinois University Press. He teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington, and in the Spalding Brief Residency MFA program.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Sep/Oct 2004

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